One Bright Moment
by kathleensmiles
Summary: "Something fell inside him when he thought of the little girl's eyes- wide, scared, and painfully familiar." AU Daryl and Carol have a one night stand that leads to the birth of Sophia. Requested by Delenaluff. Warning for adult situations, language, violence/gore and abuse. Please read and review. Now rewritten with Haley Jo from the USS Caryl!
1. All I Ask

**Authors Note:  
So this is a re-write of my multichap One Bright Moment- now being betaed by Haley Jo, the wonderful first mate of the tumblr USS Caryl!  
Go check 'em out- the blog is made of awesome.  
Anywho, I just wanted her help cleaning it up, but there's actually a pretty major storyline change now which is cool so yay Haley Jo!  
The basics however are still the same- Daryl and Carol have a one night stand pre-ZA that unbeknownst to Daryl brings about Sophia.  
I'm generally warning for language, adult situations, violence/gore, abuse, drug/alcohol use, and maybe other things that we'll deal with when we get to 'em. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR INTEREST IN THE ORIGINAL AND MY STUFF IN GENERAL AND ALSO FOR JUST CLICKING THIS!  
It's AMAZING AND I FREAKING LOVE YOU FOR IT!  
Anywho, thanks again and please leave a review, I love and appreciate them :)  
Hope you enjoy!  
**

-One Bright Moment-  
Chapter One: All I Ask

_I don't want your future.  
I don't need your past.  
One bright moment.  
Is all I ask.  
Leave My Body- Florence And The Machine_

The bar was crowded, typical for a Saturday night- or afternoon for that matter.  
Daryl moved quickly through the establishment, slipping through throngs of dancers.  
He removed himself from Merle and his crowd, who were far too rowdy for his taste, ducking past the waitress Merle had passed the clap along to, who always felt the need to go into detail about the whole goddamn experience. He knew every corner of the place.  
Through his high school years it had been more a home to him than home ever was.

Beyond just knowing the building itself, he knew everyone there, from the broads to Merle's people to guys in suits who called themselves "social drinkers" in an effort to cover up the fact that they were boozers. It sure as hell wasn't the best bar in the world- might have been one of the worst- but it was his bar and he took comfort in the routine of it, in the predictability with which nights spent here rolled on.

He was surprised, confused even, to see a stranger- a slender young woman, dressed in a silky red shirt with lips to match- perched daintily at the end of the bar.  
She looked out of place and a little stunned, her deep blue eyes glancing around worriedly.  
She was twisting her long, curly blonde hair around a finger nervously, almost flinching every time one the regulars went to approach her. She took short sips from her beer, wrinkling her nose with every one. There was something endearing about her mannerisms, but almost sadly so. She looked more like a frightened pup than a woman out for a drink.

There was some sort of pull about her though, a force that had him walking nervously towards the empty bar stool beside her. Something about how she carried herself seemed to be practically begging to be protected, held tight and defended from the rest of the world. Despite himself, he felt strangely drawn to her, to that unnamable thing that surrounded her, the vague sense of a kindred spirit.

Before he could think the better of it, he downed the whiskey he'd ordered and turned to face her.

"Hey."

Carol jumped slightly when the man spoke to her, a seemingly hesitant half-smile on his lips, his icy blue eyes surveying the bar. He was good looking in a scruffy way. His tattered flannel shirt and the stubble across his jaw gave the impression that he didn't give a damn how he looked.  
Luckily for him, he was attractive enough without much in the way of upkeep.  
Those startlingly bright eyes of his bore into her shoes while he tore into his thumbnail, waiting awkwardly for her to reply. She looked around the bar instinctively, assuring herself that Ed wasn't there, that it was safe. She took a long drink of her beer, praying that it would give her courage- and maybe some flirting skills.

_This is what you came here for_, she encouraged herself._ Remember? Freedom, rebellion...And here it is, staring at your shoes saying hello.  
So talk to him already!_

"Hey," she replied in what she hoped was a smooth, seductive voice. "I'm Carol."

He nodded, his lips quirking in what might of been smile, had it not come and gone so quickly. "Daryl. " He gestured to her now empty beer bottle.

"Ya want 'nother one o' those?"

She shrugged. "Why not?"

The palm of his hand slammed onto the bar, catching the attention of the barmaid. "Hey, Carly, 'nother beer fer her an' a shot o' whiskey fer me a'ight?"

"Nawt a prob'em, Daryl," Carly replied, promptly setting the drinks down before them.

Carol smiled at him as the barmaid walked away. "You come here alot?"

"Yeah. Known 'erybody 'round here since I were a kid, I guess. Robbie- guy t'at owns the place- he's a'ight. Lemme an' my brother crash 'ere a couple o' times. Good guy. Done a'ight by me." He quickly drained his shot of whiskey, gesturing to Carly for another. "So wha' brings ya down 'ere an'ways?"

"That obvious I'm not a local?"

"Accent ain't thick enough. Ya sound like ya mighta finished high school," he joked, that little quirk of his lips returning, hair falling in a shaggy brown mess around his face as he leaned back. " 'Sides, I'd 'a known who ya were if ya was from 'round here."

Carol took a prolonged sip of her beer, putting off answering while she could.

She'd never finished high school. She'd gotten pregnant senior year with Ed Peletier's baby.  
A drunken mistake made at a friend's birthday party, a night she couldn't even remember had taken everything from her. She had to fight to keep the tears out of her eyes as she remembered crying over the sink, screaming at those two god awful pink lines that would wipe away her future.  
She was going to be a nurse, or maybe a teacher.  
Instead she turned out to be the neighborhood scandal- seventeen, unmarried and pregnant.  
As far as the people of her quiet little suburb were concerned, she may as well have been selling herself.

Her parents fixed up the unmarried problem soon enough though. They engaged her to Ed, planned the wedding and orchestrated the whole hellish union.  
The night after the wedding rehearsal, she had awoken in a panic, with the sheets stained scarlet and blood spilling out of her. She'd miscarried, lost the baby.

She was married to Ed Peletier the next morning.

After he drove her down to their shabby honeymoon suite and locked the door behind them, she told him that the baby was gone. She told him that their entire lives were just sent down the drain for nothing. His lips thinned into a hard line while she spoke, and then he punched her. The blow stole the air from her lungs. He had looked shocked at first, appalled with himself, while he stared at her trembling, doubled-over body. Then he had grinned.

He broke three ribs and her jaw that night.

And every day of her sham of a marriage was just her honeymoon on repeat, a never ending loop of kicks and punches. So tonight, after Ed had passed out on the couch, TV porn blaring at an ungodly volume, she cleaned herself up and headed out. Though it was only one night, it belonged to her, a brief escape from that same broken, goddamn record.

"Just trying to get away for a while I guess," she replied finally, doing her best to keep her tone light.

He nodded. His eyes scanned over every inch of her face.  
He carefully read her expression before briefly revealing his own.

Understanding.

They had a couple more drinks after that, and then Daryl asked if she wanted to go outside for a smoke. With a small nod, she followed him out back, watching him drag on the cigarette, looking back and forth from her to the pavement. Her eyes dragged back and forth along the pavement as she waited expectantly for him to finish his smoke.  
She wanted him to make a move, to clarify his intentions, but her patience was wearing thin.  
As he dropped the cigarette butt onto the concrete, she turned to him, and tilted her head upwards. Both her hands grabbed at his hair and pulled his face down to her level.  
She pressed her mouth to his fiercely, tongue demanding entrance.  
He granted it almost instantly, letting her dominate the kiss, and giving her a sense of power and control that simply didn't exist with Ed. His arms wrapped carefully around her lower back, to bring her closer as she monopolized the kiss. Her tongue and teeth nipped and sucked while he kissed her slowly, steadily. He was a calm background to her ferocity.  
She let out a sigh as he pressed against her, a moan escaping him.  
She almost regretfully broke the kiss for air, gasping as she spoke.

"You have a place?"

"Yeah," he replied, short of breath. He motioned down an adjoining street, towards a collection of shoddy, older houses. "C'mon."

* * *

The minute or so that it took for Daryl to take his keys from his pocket and unlock the five different locks on his front door- because Merle would be damned if anybody was going to break in and steal his shit- passed with a painful slowness.  
As he fiddled with the deadbolt, he was almost afraid that, by the time he got the fucking door opened, she would have come to her senses and changed her mind.  
That certainly wasn't the case. When the door did finally open she pushed him against the alcove wall. Her tongue was hot and frantic as she explored his mouth.  
The door swung shut behind them. Daryl groaned back into her mouth, tugging the back of her shirt, and throwing her against him. He briefly broke the kiss as he pulled off the offending item, then resumed with just as much intensity. She took her mouth away from his, moving along to the side of his neck, to lick her way up to his jaw.

His mouth found the hollow where her slender shoulders met her neck and when she nibbled on the lobe of his ear, he bit down instinctively to stop a moan.  
She gasped loudly, her hips bucking against him. A growl came from the back of his throat at the sensation. Daryl freed one of his arms from her embrace, and felt the wall behind him for his bedroom doorknob. He smirked into her collarbone as his hands clasped against the cool metal and he quickly twisted it, falling into the room.  
They landed on the old carpet and Carol straddled him. The door swung closed with a slam.

His hands found her hips, grasping them, and he quickly glanced towards her for confirmation before he unfastened her jeans. She wriggled free of them, kicking the pants and her worn lace panties away in one fluid movement, before working at his belt.  
She was coy as she removed his boxers. Confident, she leaned over him and brought her mouth to his one last time before getting down to business. With a low, throaty moan, she slid onto him.  
Their hips rocked in time as their breaths grew shorter.

Daryl sat up, one arm around her lower back, the other hand fastened on her hip. He bit his lip, drawing blood as he struggled to keep from coming before she did. The woman was working fucking magic. The least he could do was hold his horses a little while longer.  
The pleasure , the heat in his core was building up to an almost unbearable pressure and he wasn't sure he could hold off. He barely registered the pain as his lip split.  
His teeth gnawed into the slit in an effort to force himself to hold back, and wait for her.

With a long, drawn out moan and a spasm, she finally came. He let himself go, eyes nearly rolling back into his head as he growled against her. Neither of them said a word, just lay back on the dingy but soft carpet, Carol's eyes fluttering closed.  
Despite all his efforts, the exhaustion hit Daryl full force like a sledgehammer and his eyes fell shut almost instantly as his head hit the floor.

It was after ten in the morning when he woke up again. He let out a hung-over groan, relieved that he didn't have to work that morning. Turning groggily to his side, he was surprised at the pang of disappointment he felt when he saw that Carol's sleeping figure wasn't there beside him. It was stupid. He'd known what he was getting himself into.  
He knew enough from Merle about what a one night stand entailed.  
Wasn't liked he'd fucking proposed or anything. Even as he grumbled to himself about what an idiot he was being, the disappointment was still there.

_Better to ignore it_, he decided, getting up and on with his life.

* * *

It was hot. The Georgian heat was unforgiving, and the quarry was offering no hope of shade. Daryl stood along the edge of the embankment, sun beating mercilessly on his back, while Carl and the little blonde played in the water below, astonished. He was astonished not by the dead rising to consume the living, not by the fucking apocalypse, but by a tiny, meek little twelve year old girl and her docile mother.

Twelve years- he couldn't even begin to wrap his head around it.

He'd been shocked enough when Carol had turned up at the quarry- with her husband and daughter in tow. Her hair had greyed and her face had grown hollow, worn by the events of the passing years. Something fell inside him when he thought of the little girl's eyes- wide, scared, and painfully familiar.

Twelve years.  
Yeah, that would line up pretty damn well with his one and only prior interaction with Carol.

_Shut up_, he reminded himself. _They're just eyes. Don't mean shit. Lot of people probably end up with eyes like that. It doesn't mean a thing. It's not proof. She could just as easily be the husbands_, he repeated to himself, like a mantra. He still couldn't get the girl's stare, as big and frightened and blue as the water below him, out of his head.  
It was fucking disconcerting, the way so simple a thing seemed to have thrown him off his axis, and was gnawing into the pit of his stomach, no matter how hard he tried to shrug it off. It gave him a sense of responsibility and uneasiness that he couldn't quite rid from his thoughts. He caught a glance of Carol's husband towering over her nearby, muttering something low and threatening, Carol flinched before he stalked off towards the tents.  
Daryl ground his teeth.

It was the husband that was bothering him, he decided.

Ed, a beast of a man who stunk of crap beer and whose gaze crawled up and down over his own daughter like an insect, slimy and revolting. The man was a piece of shit.  
That much had been apparent to Daryl the moment he'd laid eyes on him.  
He'd seen how Ed's hands clasped over the girl's shoulder hard enough to make her wince, how Carol made sure not to stare directly at him and kept her head bowed low.  
Her voice shook when she spoke now. There was only a slight tremor in her words, almost too insignificant to notice, but it was there nonetheless.

Daryl knew people like Ed. He had grown up with them.  
Hell, that son of a bitch could have passed as a convincing double for the sperm donor that had been his father. He knew what it was like, growing up that way.  
He understood constantly looking over your shoulder, always listening for those heavy steps behind you. The hairs on the back of his neck still stood up when he recalled the old man standing behind him, how the stink of halitosis always preceded his presence, and how the thud of his boots caused an ill, sinking feeling.

"Daryl?"

He nearly jumped at the sound of Carol's voice. He turned quickly to see her standing behind him, glancing around worriedly as if to make sure she hadn't attracted anyone's attention.

"Wha'?" He asked, his tone coming out with more bite than intended.

"Look, I know it's been a long time..."

His voice softened slightly, though the words still came out more snappishly than he'd intended. "He ain't gon' find out if tha's wha' yer worried 'bout."

She relaxed briefly, before tensing again. Her eyes were still scanning the area.  
"I should go before he gets back."

He nodded as she turned to go before speaking suddenly, his mouth moving without his permission. "Yer kid? She got a name?"

A look akin to panic washed over her as she answered. "Sophia. Why are you asking?"

He shrugged. "No reason. Jus' wonderin'."

She nodded, and turned to walk away.  
Her arms wrapped around her sides as she left, worry written in her features.

Daryl sat himself against the quarry's edge and busied himself with sharpening his knife.  
His gaze lingered on where Sophia played in the water below and he couldn't help but wonder.


	2. Fear In Your Skin

**Author's Note!  
Hey look- I updated!  
*Dodges bullets*  
Okay, sorry for the wait but I have reasons!  
I've just moved into my dorm and spent the whole summer often internet-less, working a summer job to pay for residency for college...  
Still super sorry!  
Anywho, onto the replies:**

**RhiannonMuir- Yes, more :) It's just been taking a while to get out...**

**Mione778- Thank you! Sorry for the wait but I updated as quickly as I could! Honest!  
**

**itis3- Thanks Crystal!**

**Anon- Thanks alot lovely! I'm definitely trying to keep this going as a multichap, glad you're enjoying it so far :)**

**eartbound68- Thank you!**

**DarkAngelShadow- Thanks lovely!**

**Guest- Thank you; Couldn't have done it without my fabulous beta, glad you're liking it lovely!**

**GetMoMoney-333 - Thanks! Sorry fer making you wait lovely, hope it was worth it :)**

**i love ewansmile- I'm glad you think so lovely!**

**Peta2- Thank you, I'm happy to hear you think so because damn, multichaps are hard lol**

**Thanks also to everyone who followed/favorited! You're all amazing!**

**Okay, so this chap I'm warning for drug use, cussing and mentions of abuse.  
Haley Jo still betas and I still don't own TWD or else caryl would've gone canon ages ago. Please read and review lovelies- it keeps me going.  
Enjoy!**

-One Bright Moment-

Chapter Two: Fear In Your Skin

_Full of fear in your skin_  
_And the weakness in giving in._  
_Salt Skin- Ellie Goulding_

Carol sat with Lori and Amy, peeling carrots and chopping mushrooms while the two women chatted amiably about something or the other. She'd been involved in the conversation at one point but she'd long since settled into a nervous silence while she worked. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy the company of the other two women- on the contrary, she appreciated Amy's sweetness and Lori's naturally dry humor.  
However her thoughts were far too clouded with other things for her to try and lighten up.  
Things named Daryl Dixon.

It had been a shock when he'd stepped out from his rust eaten old blue pickup.  
The surprise had been such that she`d just about keeled over.  
It had been so long since her brief rebellion at the bar, long enough that she'd convinced herself that she would probably never see him again. Then the world had more or less ended and he'd certainly been the last thing on her mind. Yet here he was, she thought, stealing a brief glance to where he sat on the quarry's edge, his eyes on the water where Sophia was playing.  
She bit her lip, worrying. He didn't know about Sophia, that her little girl was just as much his.  
He suspected though. She saw it the way his eyes stayed on the water, the change in his tone when he'd asked for her daughter's name. He was too smart to not notice how perfectly it all lined up.  
That suspicion was dangerous, a threat to the thin layer of protection she'd carefully built.

Carol had known she was pregnant no more than two weeks after the night at the bar.  
Taking a trip to the grocery store the following Monday, she snuck the purchase of a pregnancy test in with the weekly groceries and cases of beer Ed required. She'd even discretely asked the pretty blonde cashier to put it on a separate receipt that she could toss; since Ed always looked over the main one. Later in the evening, when Ed was slumped half-drunk on the couch with the pot-roast they'd had for dinner (overcooked, he'd said with a slap) she locked herself in the upstairs bathroom where her fears were confirmed.

The blood had drained from her cheeks as she sat and stared at the tiny, insignificant looking plus sign in her hand. Ed would know. She didn't let him touch her if she could avoid it- lying as still and limp as a dead fish when he forced himself into her anyways. It had been long enough that he'd even decided it was better to find places where women would spread their legs for him willingly- so long as a few measly bills were tossed their way. When Ed found out she was pregnant he would know with absolute certainty that it wasn't his.

Carol thought of Daryl Dixon, whose nervous manner and bright eyes had put her in this situation, however unintentionally. For a moment she considered looking for him, telling him about her circumstances and asking for his help in the matter. Shaking her head, she decided against it.  
She'd only known Daryl for a night- the majority of which was spent on a carpet inside a rundown apartment. It was hardly a reliable picture of what kind of man he was, if he was trustworthy or in any way fit to raise a child. No, it was better she stick with the devil she knew than bring a baby up around a creature she didn't know how to fight. Besides, even if Daryl proved himself to be every bit a father her child deserved, Ed would find them. Leaving would be useless.  
Sighing and sliding down to curl up on the laminate floor of the washroom, she choked back a sob.  
She knew what she needed to do, so taking deep, shaky breaths, she prepared herself.  
Pulling herself from the floor, she went to the sink and splashed cold water over her face.  
She could do this. She had to.

Feeling sufficiently prepared, she headed back downstairs before she lost her nerve.  
Walking out into the living room, in front of Ed, she forced herself to look him in the eye.  
Just as he started to cuss her out for blocking the TV, she pressed her mouth against his in a kiss, struggling not to gag when his slimy tongue invaded her.  
He tasted like sludge mixed with beer and her stomach churned.  
Nonetheless, she didn't pull away, despite every instinct screaming for her to shove him off and run for all she was worth. Every move she made was carefully calculated to assure she was quite the opposite of a dead fish that night, despite the revolting leer in his eyes and the bruises his clumsy sausage-like fingers left behind. When she announced her pregnancy to him a week later, he didn't ask any questions. She'd been successful, but that didn't stop Carol from feeling absolutely disgusted with herself, repulsed by her actions.

It was all worth it when she had Sophia.  
Bright, beautiful and gentle by nature, Sophia was the constant source of happiness in her world.  
Though she knew that despite all her efforts her daughter had not escaped Ed's notice entirely unscathed, she was alive and she was for the most part healthy and content.  
If Ed caught wind of Sophia's actual parentage that would no longer be the case.

While Daryl seemed earnest enough when he said that what had happened between them would stay between them, they weren't out of the woods yet. The wrong choice of woods, a loaded glance, any of these things could alert Ed to the situation and land them in hot water.

"Are you alright Carol?" Amy asked, the younger woman's light blue eyes glittering with concern.

"Yeah, you look a little distracted, if you don't watch out you'll end up losing a finger," Lori added jokingly, though her stare was just as fretful as Amy's.

Mustering up a smile, Carol turned to her companions. "It's nothing," she lied, "I'm just thinking about you know," she gestured around them, "things."

They nodded solemnly, an understanding sort of sadness on their faces.  
Carol felt a pang of guilt for lying to them, but what other choice did she have?  
She sighed, resolving to keep Daryl from her thoughts for now.  
Besides, there was nothing that could be done about it at the moment. She'd just have to wait and see how it would all unfold.

Painting a cheery smile on her face, she grinned at the two women beside her.  
"What were we talking about again?"

* * *

Daryl sat on the quarry's edge, eyes on the water, sharpening his knife until he felt certain the sun had burnt away the majority of the skin on his back.  
There was a slight soreness in his muscles from sitting too long, but despite that his stomach ate at him for apparently abandoning his post over the girl. It was stupid, there was nothing but what was probably a coincidence connecting him to the skittish little blonde, but guilt for walking away had him tearing into his thumbnail anyways. He'd already gone above and beyond his supposed duty standing guard over her for as long as he had, but his insides were hearing none of it. Doing his best to ignore them, he started off to the farthest edge of camp, where he and Merle had set up their tent.

He needed a smoke to calm his nerves- and maybe a couple shots of bourbon from his brother's bag.

Merle was lying in his cot when Daryl came in, a dog-eared copy of _Ulysses_ in his hands while he re-read it for what Daryl figured must have been the thousandth time. Reading was a little quirk of Merle's, a habit no one even began to guess at. Hell, half the people they ran into probably figured neither of them could read at all. Little did they know the elder Dixon consumed books with the same voracity he consumed his drugs and liquor. Whatever he happened to be reading, books seemed to calm him, pulling him out the world for an hour or so. Daryl preferred his brother when he was reading- it took a bit of the edge off him, made it feel like the ground they stood on was a little less shaky and the risk of Merle blowing his top wasn't really an issue. It made things appear almost normal.

Overall, Daryl was content to see his brother in a notably better headspace than usual.  
Grabbing his bag and sitting on his cot, he lit a cigarette, savoring the long drag. It wouldn't be long before he was out of cigarettes entirely, so he planned on making his last few smokes count.

"Toss me one a' those?" Merle asked, looking up from his book.

Daryl shrugged and obliged, watching his brother take out his lighter and appreciate the sensation of the smoke filling his lungs.

"So Lil' Bro," Merle asked, smoke still leaking from his mouth as he spoke, "howd' ya wanna pull this job?"

Daryl blanched, the calming effects of his cigarette instantly erased.  
Yeah, he'd more or less agreed to go along with the idea of camping down for a day or so then taking off with half this group's stuff- but it was more him grunting in reply to Merle shooting his mouth off than anything. Generally speaking he didn't really mind grabbing what wasn't his- so long as its owners had no need of it. The thought of taking from people whose straits were as dire as theirs left him feeling far more apprehensive- and his past dalliance with Carol wasn't making it any easier to undertake.

He knew hunger, it had been his one constant companion growing up; staying with him long after Ma had burnt to ashes and Merle had been carted away to the state pen. The feeling of starvation and want digging into your guts while you wasted away was a sensation he'd grown intimately familiar with.  
The notion of bringing that sort of pain down on Sophia or Carol set him ill at ease.

However he wasn't any more comfortable with the thought of telling Merle that he wasn't fucking going through with it.

"These people don' even know us." He rasped, mind working out the beginnings of a plan.

"So?" Merle asked, expression both annoyed and impatient.

"So wha' the hell makes ya they're gon' let us anywhere's near the stuff?"

Merle shrugged. "Fuckers 're stupid."

"Yeah, but they still don' trust neither a' us fer shit. Tha' cop's been up yer ass e'er since we got here."

"We'll deal wit' 'im if we gotta." Merle's brows shot up and his next words were laced with a venomous mix of suspicion and condescension. "You pussyin' out on me baby brother?"

"Fuck you Merle, ya know it ain't like that."

"Then wha' the fuck is it?"

"It's jus' a shit plan is all- the cop ain't lettin' either a' us near their stuff. Dumb ass plan's gonna get us shot."

Merle snorted derisively. "An' I s'pose ya got some better ideas Lil' Bro?"

"Yeah actually, if ya'd stop bein' a dumb shit an' listen to 'em."

Merle chuckled and Daryl winced, preparing himself for a quick right hook to the face. It never came.

Instead Merle laughed a little more before leaning back, amusement in his steely eyes. "Bro's getting' sum balls. A'ight Lil' Brother, wha's this plan a' yers?"

Daryl took a deep breath. "Stick around- not fer too long. Couple weeks a' the most. Get the morons used t' us, get the cop off'a his guard. Make 'em trust us. I'll go out on a hunt, get the food good an' stocked up. You go on a run fer wha'ever else. After we get back, we take off wit' the shit tha' night."

Merle just sat there for a while, staring, head cocked slightly to the right. Daryl stopped breathing for a moment, waiting for what was starting to feel like the inevitable rejection of his plan.  
Then his brother grinned.

"Gotta hand it t' ya Lil' Bro- tha' didn' entirely suck."

Daryl half growled and half snickered, relief coursing through him. "Fuck you Merle."

"Nawt my type Darylena," Merle mocked, turning to reach into his nearby leather pouch that Daryl knew contained enough illegal substances to keep the whole camp stoned for weeks.

"Again?" The younger Dixon asked as Merle reached into the stash. "Ya were al'eady high as a damn kite this mornin'."

"Don't remember none tha' bein' yer damn business…" Merle grumbled irritably in reply, continuing to search through the bag for whatever he was in the mood to shove up his nostrils.

He grabbed something and pulled it out.  
Daryl glanced over, more out of boredom than anything, expecting to see one of Merle's plastic, white powder filled baggies.  
Instead what he saw was a rag; one Merle had used to clean his bike, now a deep, still damp crimson from wiping blood off his brow. The blood of Merle's boy before they'd had no choice but to put him down. Hollis had been his name, the aftermath of a brief flirtation between a junkie and her dealer.  
Ever since the boy had come into existence Merle had become the perfect stereotype of the absentee father- though he had stopped dealing to the mother at least.

Yet suddenly, when the dead began to rise and the living went bat shit crazy, Merle had cared.  
Daryl can still remember to squeal the old Ford had made in protest when they took off speeding towards the mother's apartment. What they found after kicking down the door was something he wished he could stop remembering. The blood slick floor, the way the mangled and gutted boy approached a frozen Merle. Hollis had been a mere breath away from his prey before Merle had finished him with his hunting knife. It was…Messy.  
He'd had to wipe Hollis's blood from his eyes afterwards.

Daryl noticed a slight tremor in his brother's hands while Merle gripped the still wet-looking scrap, glaring at it. Nearly a minute had passed by when he threw it against the ground suddenly enough to make Daryl jump, turning to glare at him with an intensity that never accompanied anything good.

"Get out," Merle growled, his fist clenched around an unmarked bottle of pills.

Daryl didn't need to be told twice, knowing it was pointless to talk to Merle when he got into one of his moods.  
He'd suffered enough bruises and broken bones to learn the consequences.  
Cigarette between his lips, he swung his bow over his shoulder and started for the woods.

* * *

It was nearing dinner time when a bushel of squirrels suddenly materialized on the ground by Carol's feet.  
She'd been sitting with Sophia, waiting for a pot of water to heat up on the fire-pit's embers.  
Ed had been sent up to the top of the RV to take watch, despite all his protests that he allowed to stay in the tent and out of the heat. Shane had been hearing none of it. Though he was out of her line of sight, Carol could feel his eyes burning into the back of her head. He wouldn't dare try anything now, in plain sight of the rest of the group, but she knew he'd take his frustrations out on her later.  
Sophia burrowed into her side and Carol made a note to ask Lori if she could stay with Carl for the night.  
Then a pile squirrel carcasses appeared before her.

Glancing up, she noticed Daryl standing in front of her, crossbow on his back and a sheen of sweat covering his body. Sophia curled in on herself slightly when she saw him, a habit she had when it came to strangers. He squinted a little in the sunlight, his eyes darting up to where Ed sat and glowered over them, then back between her and Sophia before nodding towards the squirrels.

"Fer dinner, fer the group," he mumbled, tearing into his thumbnail. "Ain't too bad when ya stew 'em up."

"Thank you," Carol answered, meaning it. Sure it wasn't exactly a feast for kings, but it was food and every day that grew scarcer, so she was grateful. "This will help."

He shrugged. "Don't mention it. Ain't nothin'."

He ran a hand through his hair, his nervousness plain to see. Carol thought that would be that when his eyes drifted to Sophia, pausing on her for several long, drawn out seconds.  
His mouth opened slightly and Carol felt her heart stop in her chest, hyperaware of Ed's eyes on them.  
Just as suddenly as Daryl's mouth opened, he closed it, looking up at Ed then looking down at the dirt beneath him.

"Well," he drawled, sending another brief but pointed look to where Ed sat, "don't wanna get in yer way." He nodded one last time then walked back towards the farthest edge of camp.

"Who was tha'?" Sophia asked after Daryl had gone, her voice barely more than a whisper.

"No one in particular honey," Carol lied. "Just someone new to the camp."

Carol felt her daughter's head fall down against her shoulder and knew that her angel didn't suspect a thing. Ignoring the sinking in her chest, she allowed herself a tiny sigh of relief.


End file.
